Stephen Booth - One Last Breath

If you stood still in here, it could get chilly. Some of the chambers had a bad atmosphere, too. From time to time, he had the conviction that he must be following someone, because he could hear noises ahead, like another person’s boots dislodging stones or splashing in a pool. But Quinn ignored the noises and the illusions, taking his time, feeling his way along the walls as he walked through the stream, the water sometimes over and inside his boots.

What would it be like if the cavern flooded? He thought of white foam and the roar as the water rushed over the rocks, the rumbling as it grew in volume and reached the roof.

Quinn reached another pool and turned on his torch. He saw flickering movements in the water and realized that life existed down here after all. Minute creatures were wriggling along on their sides, like tiny fragments of fingernail. Troglodytic shrimps, living in an environment free of predators. He wondered why they didn’t they get washed out when the caves flooded.

Here, the floor was covered in flowstone with water running over it. Quinn crouched close to the ground. He could hear voices all the time now, though he knew it was just the echoes of the cave. These caverns should be as remote and unaffected by man as the furthest reaches of the planet. Time meant something here, because the cave had gone through millions of years like this, experiencing the slow dissolving of rock in water. It made him feel tiny and transitory.

Yet the curtains of flowstone had been splattered and smeared with mud by hundreds of pairs of cavers’ boots over the years. He’d read about members of one of the caving clubs going into Moss Chamber with scrubbing brushes to restore the flowstone to its original gleaming whiteness. Apparently they’d not been here, for he could see imprints left by the recent passage of many boots. If he wanted to, he could leave his own mark. The mud would stick to him, too. It would cling to him like a dirty memory.

Now he was here, he knew the cavern was the right place. He could have waited above the house in Castleton and made the shot whenever he wanted to, but it wouldn’t have felt right. He’d waited so long that another day was nothing, if it meant doing it properly.

Quinn knelt to take a drink from the pool in his cupped hands. Unlike the water from the well in Edendale, this was freezing cold, and it made him gasp. It left an aftertaste on the back of his mouth — a strange, acid bitterness. It was the bitterness of stone.

Sunday, 18 July

Diane Fry sat back in her chair at West Street, staring at the notes she’d made. It was a pity that they didn’t have Mansell Quinn’s DNA profile. There ought to be something — some identifiable trace of him that would remove the doubts Ben Cooper had raised. They were the sort of baseless doubts that Fry would normally have dismissed as a wild-goose chase. It was Cooper’s kind of obsession, not hers.

Somebody had opened the windows again in the CID room, though Fry had asked them not to. Already this morning she could sense nature sneaking in. Every seeding patch of grass in the Peak District was sending its pollen in her direction right now. Though she’d taken the antihistamine tablets, she could feel the membranes in her nose beginning to swell.

At least authorization had come through for her to get information from Human Resources on PC 4623 Netherton, Arthur. According to his file, he’d received the Chief Constable’s Commendation and a Royal Humane Society Testimonial for rescuing a woman who’d been threatening to jump from a bridge over the River Derwent some years ago. Another hero, then.

But Arthur Netherton had retired from Derbyshire Constabulary in 2000 after thirty years’ service, and had moved to Spain. Death benefits under his pension provision had been paid to his widow three years later. Netherton had died of a heart attack in his mid-fifties. Too much of the good life in too short a time, perhaps? Fry suppressed a surge of jealousy. Too much of the good life? Chance would be a fine thing.

With both of the uniformed heroes gone to the great dress parade in the sky, her options for a first-hand account of events at 82 Pindale Road in October 1990 were limited. Mansell Quinn was unavailable, while Carol Proctor was the most silent witness of all.

And now Rebecca Quinn was dead, too. What might Rebecca have been able to tell her? Anything useful? Well, perhaps Quinn himself had thought so — or somebody had. Whoever stabbed her with the carving knife had made sure she wouldn’t talk.

Fry sighed. She was starting to sound like Ben Cooper. Quinn was guilty, and no one should have any doubts.

So who was left? The Quinns’ neighbours? She pulled out the Hope Valley telephone directory, but found no listing for any Townsends at 84 Pindale Road. She tried calling a couple of possibilities in Bamford and Bradwell, but they were the wrong Townsends and no relation — or not admitting to it. Then she dug out the electoral roll for the Castleton ward. The current residents of 84 Pindale Road were a family by the name of Ho.

Great. So it looked as though the Townsends had left the area, too. The world was full of people trying to put the past behind them. And some of them were doing it more successfully than others.

The gala was over in Hathersage. As Diane Fry drove through the village, workmen were taking down the bunting, and the bus shelter had reverted to its normal boring state.

On the Moorland estate, children were playing on the grass and adults were washing their cars. This time, Fry found herself taking notice of small things here and there — a clown puppet hanging by its strings in an upstairs window, a rabbit with long golden fur in a hutch on a front lawn. There was a ‘ Not in my name ’ poster in a bedroom window, left over from an Iraqi War protest, while across the street someone had painted a smiley face on their wheelie bin. A lady sat outside at a plastic table reading a newspaper, with a collie dog asleep at her feet.

Enid Quinn had a distracted air today. She had been standing in a corner of her garden, wearing her yellow rubber gloves to dead-head the roses.

‘I know it’s hard having to go over it again and again,’ said Fry. ‘But you must understand how necessary it is.’

Mrs Quinn wouldn’t look at Fry, but watched the children on the grass across the road.

‘Of course it’s necessary,’ she said. ‘I know that. It’s all absolutely bloody necessary.’

Fry watched her carefully from the corner of her eye. The woman’s voice had taken on an unfamiliar edginess that might be the first sign of a crack in her composure. The people who seemed most in control were often the ones who disintegrated in a big way when the stress finally became too much. She didn’t want that to happen to Mrs Quinn.

‘We could go and talk somewhere else, if you like?’ she said. ‘Perhaps we could go in the house and have a cup of tea?’

‘No, this is fine.’

The scent of the roses was too strong for Fry. The smell hung around her like cheap perfume. But it was grass pollen that triggered her hay fever, so she might be OK.

‘The thing is,’ said Fry, ‘we need to go over the past, because it may be the only way of figuring out what’s going through your son’s mind.’

‘If it’s Simon and Andrea you’re interested in, you should be talking to them, not me. I don’t remember anything. I wasn’t there.’

‘I’ve made an appointment to see them later today. But I think there are things you may be able to tell me, even though you weren’t there. Simon and Andrea are your grandchildren, after all.’

Mrs Quinn looked back towards the house with a half-shrug of her shoulders, as if it wasn’t important. Fry frowned at her, trying to divine her thoughts, and failing. She wasn’t a psychologist, she was a police officer. Her own experiences didn’t give her access to the mind of someone like Mrs Quinn.